Getting gigabit out of your Service Console - finally

[wizardberry]

We were finally able to achieve gigabit transfer rates via the service console, verified with iperf.

Anyone having problems with gigabit access on your console - try the following:

1. Go into VI Client and open the configuration tab for the host in question.

2. Open properties on the VSwitch with the service console in question.

3. Select the service console in question and choose "continue...."

4. Finally, choose the traffic shaping tab and keep the box checked and choose DISABLED.

Note that unchecking did not appear to increase our bandwidth from 100Mbit - we had to keep it checked and choose disabled to override the default policy.

Changing this setting may not be preferrable from a VMWare support perspective, but turning it on to get minor tasks accomplished in a short period of time is worth it!!!

[Cloneranger]

thats interesting, I have never thought of my service console being limited in some way,

I always assumed it was just gigabit, and never tested the actual performance,

What sort of things does it speed up as a matter of interest?

[RenaudL]

Strange... I don't think (but I might be wrong) that traffic shaping is supposed to be turned on by default on the Service Console. Are you using traffic shaping in other portgroups by any chance?

[wizardberry]

It speeds up moving data around from a storage device attached to the esx

host to the network (possibly a samba mount, etc...) Without the change,

the service console is speed limited by default to 100Mbps - perhaps a design

"feature" to limit the performance impact that the console could have on

other parts of the esx host...

Michael

>-- Original Message --

>Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:42:58 -0800

>From: Cloneranger <communities-emailer@vmware.com>

>To: <michael.berry@cgcmail.maricopa.edu>

>Subject: http://ESX Server 3.x Configuration New message: "Getting gigabit out

>of

your Service Console - finally"

>

,

>A new message was posted in the thread "Getting gigabit out of your Service

>Console - finally":

>http://communities.vmware.com/message/851447

>Author : Cloneranger

>Profile : http://communities.vmware.com/people/Cloneranger

>Message:

[jhanekom]

I'd have to agree with Renaud on this - I've previously tested network performance from the Service Console using iperf and didn't find it to be throttled to 100Mbps - at least not in my environments.

Chances are it's something specific to your deployment; either a setting set on the vswitch level as Renaud suggested, or maybe a specific upgrade path you followed?

[mike_laspina]

Hello,

Thanks for the info. We use TSM on the SC and this will definetly improve the BU cycle, But I will have to be carefull not to kill the hosts.

[RParker]

Our servers are already configured as default for this. So maybe your servers were changed somewhere. I don't see where this is ON by default anywhere.